This application makes reference to, incorporates the same herein, and claims all benefits accruing under 35 U.S.C. xc2xa7119 from an application for METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR CONTROLLING POWER OF COMPUTER SYSTEM USING WAKE ON LAN (LOCAL AREA NETWORK) SIGNAL earlier filed in the Korean Industrial Property Office on Jul. 30, 1998 and there duly assigned Ser. No. 30934/1998.
The present invention relates to power control of a computer, and more particularly, to method and apparatus for controlling the power of a computer using a wake up local area network (LAN) signal generated by a network administrator of a computer network.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,802,305 for a System For Remotely Waking a Sleeping Computer in Power Down State by Comparing Incoming Packet to the List of Packets Storing on Network Interface Card to McKaughan et al. discloses a Local Area Network where one computer can access and turn the power on to a remote computer. U.S. Pat. No. 5,689,715 for a Low Power Ring Detect For Computer System Wake-Up to Crump et al. discloses power management control of a remote computer from a telephone. However, these references do not disclose powering up or powering down certain select peripherals of the computer from a remote location. Instead, they power up or power down the entire computer system. In addition, the computers described by the above prior art do not contain a computer flag which allows the computer peripherals to be power managed from a remote location in a network.
It is an objective of the present invention to provide a method for controlling the power of a computer system using a wake up LAN signal, by which an apparatus is protected by controlling power of a predetermined apparatus such as a hard disk after checking the system setup state, even if the system is automatically powered on by the wake up LAN signal.
It is another objective of the present invention to provide an apparatus for controlling the power of the computer system using a wake up LAN signal performing the above method.
It is still another objective of the present invention to provide a method for controlling the power of a computer system using a wake up LAN signal, by which power on enable/disable is set in a system in wake up LAN enable, to thereby suppress power-on in input of an undesired wake up LAN signal.
It is still an object to power manage certain select peripherals of a computer system from a remote location in a computer network.
It is yet another object to have a software flag for each peripheral in a computer system that enables or disables the peripherals to be power managed from a remote location.
Accordingly, to achieve the first objective, there is provided a method for controlling the power of a computer system using a wake up LAN signal including the steps of: (a) powering devices other than predetermined peripheral apparatuses sensible to power on/off, when the wake up LAN signal is sensed in the power-off state of the computer system; (b) checking power on enable or disable in wake up LAN enable from the system setup state during booting of the computer; and (copyright) powering on the predetermined peripheral apparatuses if a system is set to power on enable, and powering off the devices powered on in step (a) if not.
To achieve the second objective, there is provided an apparatus for controlling the power of a computer system using a wake up LAN signal including: a power controlling unit generating a first control signal when the wake up LAN signal is sensed, and generating a second control signal in accordance with the setup state of the system; a first switch connected to a predetermined power supply, and supplying the power to devices of the system other than predetermined peripheral apparatuses sensible to powering on and off in response to the first control signal; and a second switch supplying power to the peripheral apparatuses in response to the second control signal.
To achieve the third objective, there is provided a method for controlling power of a computer system using awake up LAN signal including the steps of (a) setting the power on enable or disable in wake up LAN enable, (b) checking information on the wake up LAN set in step (a), when the wake up LAN signal is sensed in the power-off state of the computer system, (c) powering on the computer system when the system is set to the power on enable state powering off the computer system if not, and (d) powering on the computer system when the information on the wake up LAN is not checked in step (b).